How to enhance customer loyalty

Customers and clients form the foundation of most businesses. Without customers to purchase their products or use their services, most companies would cease to exist. This means it’s a good idea for your business to encourage loyalty among its customers. 

This article will provide you with a few different strategies you can use to enhance customer loyalty. We’ll cover several different methods, including:

• Reward programs
• Offering discounts
• Referral programs
• Pay attention to social trends
• Ask for feedback
• Managing income with Countingup

The influence your customers have on your business is enormous, as without them, your business will have a tough time turning a profit. It’s a good idea to reward customers that repeatedly shop with you, as it enhances loyalty and means they’ll continue to engage with your business.

There are many different reward programs that you could begin using, but make sure to pick the most appropriate program for your business. For instance, coffee shops commonly use paper cards that they’ll stamp each time you visit, and offer a free drink on the 10th visit. While this is great for coffee shops, it’s much less useful for online stores. 

A points system can be a better alternative if you don’t have an actual store for customers to visit. When you make your website, include a feature that allows customers to create their own profile. Then, whenever customers purchase items, they’ll be awarded points to their profile. 

Then, allow customers to exchange points for discounts or bonuses like free delivery. This rewards system encourages customers to stay loyal and shop with you consistently to gain more points.

Offering discounts to repeat customers is a good way to enhance their loyalty, as they’re unlikely to shop elsewhere if they can get reduced prices when they shop with you. Identifying loyal customers when you operate a brick and mortar store is easier, but it can be tricky if you have an ecommerce store.

To identify online customers that deserve discounts, you’ll need to use software that tracks the visitors to your website. This type of software can also track who is making purchases, meaning you can identify who is repeatedly buying your products. If you have the customer’s email address or other contact information, you can send them discount codes for future use. 

As well as successfully enhancing the loyalty of existing ones, offering discounts can attract new customers. In fact, by making your discounts a regular feature — for instance, offering a discount on a specific day of the week — you can both attract new customers and encourage loyalty in them at the same time. Though some may only use the discount once, others will know to shop with you on that specific day and become loyal returning customers.

A referral is when someone who has already engaged with your business recommends it to someone who’s not used your product or service. It can be tricky to ask for referrals without sounding pushy or desperate. Instead of asking directly, you can try using a referral program.

Referral programs are great as they draw in new customers while enhancing the loyalty of your existing customers. The basic premise of a referral program is that when a customer refers someone to you and that referred individual makes a purchase, the original customer gets a reward. 

These rewards can be anything, but a small discount code or voucher is a common example. By rewarding existing customers, you enhance their loyalty, while enjoying the sales from new customers.

You may find that your referral program leads to a lot of new visitors to your website, but not a huge number of new sales. If this happens, consider offering discounts to the new customers as well as the existing ones that referred them. This will encourage the new customers to buy as they’ll get their item at a reduced price.

Asking for feedback shows that you’re committed to improving the way you do business. By asking customers for feedback, you can enhance their loyalty, as you’ll show that you value their opinions. 

There are a huge number of feedback techniques you can use to ask customers what they think of your business, but we’ll provide some of the more common examples.

Surveys are a good technique to use as they’re simple to make. If you have a good amount of your customers’ contact information, they’re also fairly easy to send out, as you can simply email your customers with a series of survey questions. To maximise the loyalty gained from this form of feedback, consider offering a discount to customers that complete the survey.

Asking for product reviews shows that you care about what your customers think of your products. By making these product reviews visible to anyone who visits your website, you can enhance customer loyalty further, as this shows you trust your customers to provide positive, encouraging feedback.

This is the most straightforward way of requesting feedback, as it involves simply asking customers what they think using your company’s social media pages. If you use this method, you’ll speak with customers personally, discussing the problems and positives of your business with them. As this method is very heavy on customer engagement, it’s perfect for enhancing loyalty, since it shows your willingness to approach customers directly. 

Enhancing customer loyalty will lead to people shopping with you repeatedly, which will lead to an increase in sales revenue. You’ll need to track how much money is coming in and what it’s being spent on, which can be complicated if you don’t have the expertise. To make accounting easier, try using a financial management app like Countingup.

Countingup is the business current account with built-in accounting software that allows you to manage all your financial data in one place. With features like automatic expense categorisation, invoicing on the go, receipt capture tools, tax estimates, and cash flow insights, you can confidently keep on top of your business finances wherever you are. 

You can also share your bookkeeping with your accountant instantly without worrying about duplication errors, data lags or inaccuracies. Seamless, simple, and straightforward! 

Find out more here.